The team is back from Namibia, where they beat the Windhoek Draught Welwitschias 42-8 to maintain the third spot on the North Conference log. Earlier in the season, the Steval Pumas and Hino Falcons played out to a scintillating 41-41 draw in Kempton Park.<\/p>\n
Steval Pumas coach, Brent Janse van Rensburg, said that he expects a similar challenge this weekend, warning of the dangers of the Hino Falcons attack, despite what must have been a painful 96-27 thrashing at the hands of the Xerox Golden Lions last week.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are a team that poses a lot of threats with ball in hand. We will really have to work hard to contain them. Our focus has also been on the set piece: they are a team that contest lineouts really well and put your ball under pressure. They are also good at launching their attack from their lineout and have a variety of options that we have been preparing for,\u201d said Janse van Rensburg.<\/p>\n
Janse van Rensburg said that a key focus area will be to remain patient with ball in hand, particularly after some soft moments in the game against Namibia.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter the Namibian game, we have to start well and for that to happen we have to put a team performance together. We seem to be throwing the ball away aimlessly at critical moments. I think if you\u2019re chasing points the way that the players tried to do when they played Namibia, sometimes one loses your composure mentally,\u201d said Janse van Rensburg.<\/p>\n
Team changes this week will include the return of Ruwellyn Isbell as right wing, Justin van Staden as replacement fly-half and Devon Williams as utility back after the trio return from injury.<\/p>\n
\u201cGerrit Smith will be at full back as he needs game time to get some rhythm. Jerome Pretorius got a start last week and we are really happy with his performance, so we will keep him this week.<\/p>\n
Ruwellyn has done some good things in the past and we want to give him another chance this week,\u201d said Janse van Rensburg.<\/p>\n
The match against the Hino Falcons kicks off at 15:00 at the Mbombela Stadium in Nelspruit. Be sure to get your tickets for what promises to be another action-packed clash.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As the SuperSport Rugby Challenge reaches its sharp end, the Steval Pumas are anticipating a fierce battle when they come up against the Hino Falcons on home turf this Saturday. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2844,"featured_media":68761,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"hasGravity":false,"cxt_article_byline":"Tobie van den Bergh","cxt_disable_google_ads":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2887,7,11,2,2886],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general-sport","category-local-news","category-local-sports","category-news-headlines","category-sports-news"],"category_labels":{"Category":"News","SubCategory":"Local news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2844"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68760\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}